


finding the words (an aftermath)

by Schistosity



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, I'm a sucker for reunions, Missing Scene, Post-Calamity Ganon, Reunions, could be read as platonic :), ish, prose, this game makes me very emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schistosity/pseuds/Schistosity
Summary: "Do you remember me?"There are approximately ten seconds between the end of the princess’s question and his answer.-A little take on a missing scene.





	finding the words (an aftermath)

**Author's Note:**

> found this on my old computer and cleaned it up a little. just some thoughts about zelda i wrote after finishing breath of the wild. it got mushy. but so does most of my work.

_Do you remember me?_

There are approximately ten seconds between the end of the princess’s question and his answer.

It’s been one-hundred years since he’s seen her – one-hundred and one and twelve days and five hours to be more precise – and yet these ten seconds feel so much longer. These seconds are a small eternity so gaping and terrifying he fears he will get lost again.

She asks him if he remembers her like it’s an easy thing to do.

 _Barely_ , he wants to say. _Some things. Not enough._ But he doesn’t say anything at all, because he was never really good at that.

His voice sits unused and poised in his throat. He hasn't used it in so long he's afraid he's forgotten how. He's afraid it won’t reach her across the small distance between them, even if he could bring himself to use it.

So, with what feels like painstaking slowness, he raises a hand and reaches for her. He was always better at doing things rather than saying them.  

His heart skips several beats as his calloused fingers meet the skin of her arm. It’s soft and a little cold but more importantly she’s solid and real and he wants to cry. She isn’t a spirit, she isn’t a figment of his lonely imagination, she’s real. He stands there, staring at the small but gargantuan contact between the two of them.

“I–“ His voice trembles, like him. It wavers, catches, and stalls like a fearful horse except he can’t calm it. _A year of struggling to get to this point_ , he thinks _, and you can’t even say anything to her? What could you ever say to her?_

Her eyebrows knit together in concern and he quickly catalogs the expression, scraping the gutted barrel of his memories for any matches. He picks out one, maybe two, but they’re foggy and indistinct and slip away from his grasp.

He thinks he must look miserable, because she lays a hand on his arm too.  

“Link?”

He hears her unusually small voice say his name again. It’s the way the Zora and the Sheikah elders say his name – with a familiarity behind the sound that makes it feel like a real name. There are memories in her words that he cannot share in remembering with her. He can feel them though. Maybe that’s enough?

Not for her though. He sees a sad understanding in her eyes and he knows that she has her answer.

So, he doesn’t answer her with words, because he was never really good at that.

The sky bursts over Hyrule Field and he hugs her without a shred of hesitation he might have once held. Under the sudden rain his arms, bruised and sore, wrap around her and he pulls her closer to him – or maybe he’s pulling himself closer to her? He buries his face in her soft hair and revels in her tangibility. There’s a level of childish desperation in the gesture he thinks he would have, at one point, found embarrassing. But he doesn’t care right now.  

He can’t remember the last time he held someone like this. He had hoped he would remember at least that.

Then he feels her arms reach up around him, and her face presses against his shoulder. He feels the rise and fall of her chest and her warm breath as she grips him tighter. She is real and there.

He remembers the last time she held him like this. It’s not a pleasant memory by any stretch – it’s one that’s married to memories of rain and hurt and dying – but it’s something more than not remembering at all. It’s enough to let him hold onto a tenuous thread of hope.

“You don’t have to say anything.” She whispers it, but her voice is deafening in his ears. Its mere presence startles him, shakes him deep down in his bones. “I know.”

She _knows_. She knows _him_.

He may not remember everything about her, but she remembers _everything_ about him. Knowledge of her profound understanding of him is a memory he doesn’t need to cling to. He’s never been good at finding the right words and that’s okay because she knows that.

He doesn’t remember everything but for the first time that doesn’t feel like a problem. He remembers enough. He remembers her laugh and her hair and her sometimes-horrible attitude. He remembers enough bits and pieces of their time together to fill in the blanks of a story of hesitance and distrust that became mutual strength and understanding.

And most of all he remembers her smile. She shows it to him as they pull back from each other – not fully, just enough to be face to face, not enough to break the tiny yet infinitesimal contact between them. The contact that shocks him like the soft static of a warm rug that he can't seem to match with words, no matter how hard he tries. 

They stand there in the rain. He's covered in ichor and dirt and she's still in her dress - the white dress she’s been wearing for one-hundred-and-one years and however many days which is clinging to her skin like another layer of it. She's soaked to the bone and looking so much smaller for it, but she still smiles up at him. She always did that - smiled despite everything.  

He had missed her so much. 

“I'm sorry, Zelda,” he says. It’s two words and they’re weak. They’re not the answer to a question nor are they leading anywhere in particular. They’re just two words, ones he _can_ find, and ones he can say with surety.

She laughs now. It's clear and crisp and nothing like the shards of memories he's been holding onto. She laughs like a bell through the sound of the rain and puts a hand on his cheek. “No "Princess"?" She says. "How rude.”

And then she hugs him again, because she had always been a little better at doing things than saying them, too.

**Author's Note:**

> let them hug, ya animals


End file.
